African science ministers have backed a set of measures to promote science and technology across the continent, four of which will be recommended for endorsement at next month's African Union summit of heads of African states.The ministers, who met last week in Cairo, Egypt, will ask the heads of state to create a Pan-African Intellectual Property Organisation, and to designate 2007 as a year for science, technology and innovation in Africa.

South Africa's largest property group-Pam Golding Properties (PGP) will enter the East African market beginning early next year. PGP chief executive officer Mr. Andrew Golding told Business Week from Cape Town, South Africa last week that the group had highlighted Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, Angola, Zambia, Lesotho, Morocco, Rwanda, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the rest of Africa as important growth areas.

As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) kicks of its assessment mission in Zimbabwe this week, the country's courts sent two officials of a well-known bakery to prison for breaking the price control law. The IMF has repeatedly called for price deregulation, among other measures, to manage the economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

First results from elections on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar have showed Marc Ravalomanana, the millionaire president, is on course to win a second term. The election was the first since the political crisis in 2001-2002 which brought one of the world's poorest countries close to civil war before Ravalomanana won power.

A coalition of former opposition parties and independent candidates has won Mauritania's parliamentary elections, after a second round of voting on Sunday. Of the 95 seats in the new national assembly, an alliance of ex-opposition parties has won 41, seats while independent candidates have taken 39 others.

In 2003, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched a joint effort to develop, through multi-site field research in refugee communities in Africa, a set of strategies for using food and nutrition-based interventions to support HIV prevention, care, treatment and support for people living with HIV.

FEATURE: Uganda has a reputation of having controlled its HIV/AIDS problem. With World Aids Day coming up, however, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon argues that the extent of the virus in Northern Uganda is perhaps more severe than figures indicate.
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Salma Maoulidi writes that For an HIV/AIDS breakthrough to happen in Tanzania, a radical approach to tackling HIV/AIDS is needed.
- In Uganda the government has proposed a traditional form of justice, Mato Oput, to replace the International Criminal Court indictments. Dieu-Donné WEDI DJAMBA explores the implications such a move will have for the post-conflict Democratic Republic of Congo, where the national judicial system is in collapse, and the only alternative left for victims of war to seek justice from is the ICC.
- Peluola Adewale argues that to avoid a serious post run-off election crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, foreign diplomats convinced both the presidential contestants to agree to grant a measure of personal, financial and legal protection to whoever loses
PAN AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem says France should be in the dock, not Kagame.
BLOGGING AFRICA: Sokari Ekine focuses on blogs by African women.
BOOKS & ARTS: The study of Africa
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: We are Feminists and proud of it
AFRICAN UNION MONITOR: Unite behind protection for Darfur
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Links to news on Sudan, Somalia, Chad, CAR and the DRC.
HUMAN RIGHTS: Judge allows Madonna adoption challenge
WOMEN AND GENDER: Rape, the silent weapon
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Darfur survivors face uncertain future in Chad
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Bemba ready to lead opposition
DEVELOPMENT: African countries should diversify exports to meet MDGs
CORRUPTION: South African police chief under suspicion of corruption
HEALTH AND HIV/AIDS: World AIDS day 2006
EDUCATION: New students’ loan scheme
ENVIRONMENT: The need for green revolution in Africa
LAND AND LAND RIGHTS: Rethinking land policy
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: MISA takes issue with state house press officer
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: Police brutality
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Africans told to revive science culture
PLUS: e-Newsletters and Mailings Lists; Fundraising and Useful Resources; Courses, Seminars and Workshops

The Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo has declared Joseph Kabila the winner of a controversial presidential run-off election held on 29 October. After the elections, Jean-Pierre Bemba filed an electoral fraud petition with the Supreme Court and asked it to nullify the vote. After reviewing the petition, the court rejected Bemba's objections, on grounds of insufficient evidence. Peluola Adewale argues that “to avoid a serious post run-off election crisis, foreign diplomats were reportedly trying to persuade both presidential contestants to agree to grant a measure of personal, financial and legal protection to whoever loses. This is to assure the would-be loser and perhaps, his backers, that their share of the looted mineral wealth of the Congo will not be lost.”

Voters in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) went back to the polls on 29 October 2006 for the run-off presidential election. The contest was between Joseph Kabila, the incumbent, installed in 2001 after his father Laurent was murdered by a presidential security aide, and Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former warlord and one of four vice presidents in a power-sharing government that was set up to end a five year war. The 30 July election did not produce a clear winner out of 33 presidential candidates. Kabila got 45%, while Bemba got 20% of the votes on a 70% turnout.

‘The Economist’ magazine (London, October 26, 2006), described the choice the Congo’s voters had to make in the run-off election as choosing between “cholera and the plague”.

The provisional results for the second round of elections, released on 15 November, suggest Kabila has won the election. Kabila won 58.05% and Bemba got 41.95%. Bemba however, alleged there was fraud, with more than one million fake votes for Kabila and filed a complaint at the Supreme Court of Justice. This means that the final results will not be ready until November 30 when the court is expected to give its verdict on the election.

The results, like those in the first round, reflect the sharp division along ethnic lines, between the East of the country, where Kabila has the upper hand, and the West, including the capital, Kinshasa, where Bemba has a big following. This is ominous for the post-election situation.

Many Bemba supporters believe the UN and Western powers financed and organised the elections to establish Kabila as president and to have a ‘legitimate government’. The powers hope this will allow giant corporations to fully exploit the Congo’s natural wealth, as well as allowing EU States a pretext to stop refugees fleeing the Congo from entering Europe.

After the first round of elections in August, 30 people were killed in gun battles. For the second round, UN and EU troops tried to gather weapons in Kinshasa, and used armoured vehicles and helicopters to patrol the city’s streets.

However, the people of the Congo apparently expect the electoral process, the first in more than four decades, to provide relief for a country whose only history is that of rapacious and ruthless colonialism, parasitic dictatorship, official corruption and brutal war. The country, which is two-thirds the size of Western Europe, has only 300 miles of paved roads! Yet, the Congo is potentially one of the richest countries in Africa, due to its enormous natural resources and mineral wealth.

For 32 years (1965 - 1997) the country (formerly known as Zaire) was ruled and ruined by a staunch ally of the West in the Cold War era, Mobutu Sese Seko, who plundered the economy and repressed the people.

Mobutu so personified corruption that it was for his government the term ‘kleptocracy’ – a combination of kleptomaniac (compulsive thief) and autocracy - was originally coined. Mobutu was installed with the support of the US and Western European powers, which earlier supervised the overthrow and killing of Patrice Lumumba, the left-leaning first prime minister of post-colonial Congo after winning independence from Belgium in 1960. As was the practice in the Cold War era, the Western imperialist powers enthroned Mobutu to secure Congo for continued imperialist exploitation and to act as a launching site against “communism” in the region, particularly Angola. The USA provided more than $300 million in arms and $100 million in military training for the dictatorship. Western imperialism also provided Mobutu with loans that plunged the country into a serious debt burden, even when they knew that Mobutu accumulated money for self-enrichment. The dictator amassed a personal fortune estimated at $4 billion and ran up a $12 billion external debt.

The removal of Mobutu from power, in 1997, by Laurent Kabila-led guerrilla insurgents, not only failed to provide a solution to the terrible poverty facing most people in the Congo, but, in reality, set the stage for worse disaster. The 1998 insurrection by rebels linked to Rwanda and Uganda triggered a war involving six other nations. Between 1998 and 2003, the Congo was plunged into what was described as the bloodiest conflict since the Second World War. Over four million people were killed in the conflict, which was termed “Africa’s world war” because it involved six other African countries; Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Kabila has had his own army since the 1990s, while Bemba has had an armed force since the early 2000s, when he ruled parts of northeast Congo.

The war led to the United Nations’ (UN) biggest and most expensive mission, involving an 18,000-strong peace-keeping force and expenditure of $1.1 billion a year. However, a journalist, Aidan Hartley, described ‘Monuc’ (as the UN force in Congo is known), as an ill-equipped ‘Third World’ army, which had to make do with old American and Soviet aircraft dating back to the Vietnam era. He also queried the morality of the UN using contingents from a military dictatorship (Pakistan) and from monarchies (Nepal and Morocco) to ‘help’ Congo become democratic. Hartley wrote that the UN’s approach in the Congo was similar to the disastrous US-led mission in Somalia, in 1993. During that conflict, the imperialist powers sub-contracted the task of stabilising the crises to their allies in African and other developing nations while ensuring their continued exploitation of Africa.

The Congo war was fuelled by the country’s vast mineral wealth with all sides, including multinational corporations from the West, taking advantage of the anarchy to plunder the natural resources. The resources were also used to finance the conflict. The country is rich in diamonds, water, coltan, copper, timber and other natural resources. A 2001 UN Security Council report on the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the Congo, estimated that Rwanda, alone, might have gained at least $250 million over a period of 18 months from the pillage of coltan. This was said to be substantive enough to finance the war. Burundi and Uganda were also seriously indicted by the report. Coltan is used in high-tech industries as a key component in the manufacture of mobile phones, computers, stereos and VCRs. Its price soared substantially in 1999 and 2000 when the world supply was decreasing and demand was increasing, thereby leading to a large increase in production of coltan in the Congo.

The US, Belgium, Britain and France are also implicated in the Congo conflict. They manipulated the conflict for their economic interests and supplied millions of dollars of weapons to different sides in the conflict. Large quantities of arms were transferred by US and Britain to the Congo, via Eastern European countries.

Perhaps more than any other country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) deserves peace, having known only exploitation and crisis - economic, social and political – since its inception as a state.

The ‘Independent’ newspaper (London, 28 July 2006) described the country as “the most blighted nation on the earth”. But the November election will not bring the peace so yearned for by working people in the Congo, if events since the first election round are anything to go by. The results of the first round elections in August, were greeted by three days of fighting between the armies of Kabila and Bemba. Less than a week before the 29 October election, violent clashes took place daily. Between August and late October over 30 people were killed in street battles. Fighting, which left two people dead, broke out on 13 November, after the second round provisional results put Kabila ahead.

To avoid a serious post run-off election crisis, foreign diplomats were reportedly trying to persuade both presidential contestants to agree to grant a measure of personal, financial and legal protection to whoever loses. This is to assure the would-be loser and perhaps, his backers, that their share of the looted mineral wealth of the Congo will not be lost.

The long-suffering masses of the Congo desperately yearn for an end to war. But ‘peace’ established under the auspices of former warlords and imperialist powers will not end poverty, joblessness and all the other abundant social ills facing working people. Only a policy of transforming the devastated economy, including building adequate infrastructure, and fundamentally improving living standards, could allow the poor masses to expect to see light at the end of the tunnel. But this will not happen as long as the Congo is run on the basis of anti-poor, neo-liberal policies, as dictated by the IMF/World Bank, and for as long as the Congo’s huge mineral wealth is plundered by the multinationals.

To free up resources to guarantee basic needs, like education, health, water, electricity and proper roads, the huge natural resources of the Congo have to be taken into public ownership, under the democratic management and control of working people. Disastrous neo-liberal economic policies have to end.

Transforming the lives of the mass of people in the Congo is impossible under capitalism, which sees it remaining a neo-colonial country under the stranglehold of imperialism.

Whether the presidential election ends conflict or not, and irrespective of whether Kabila or Bemba is in power, under capitalism workers and the poor of the Congo will discover that their living standards cannot be meaningfully improved, despite the enormous resources of the country. This can open up possibilities for the ideas of mass struggle in opposition to the local rulers and imperialism, and the growing support for a socialist alternative. Of course, workers’ organisations are weak, due to years of dictatorship and devastating war, but only by building independent organisations of workers and the poor can the grip of the local looters and imperialists be broken in the DR Congo.

• Peluola Adewale is the editor of the Socialist Democracy, Lagos Nigeria.
• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

I thought the article, ‘Community rights and foreign direct investment’ (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/34803) was well written and informative. I am indeed impressed by the way the author brings out his point. However, recently, I met a very senior member, as in authority; of the Yala community and he had a totally different viewpoint to yours. The gist of his argument was that for once, the communities around Yala Swamp will earn income, either from employment at Dominion or those spinning from the support tree trickling down from Dominion.

In fact he was positive that many members of the community would have not changed from their current economic activities 100 years from now - several generations hence. This man is about 67 years old and he asserts that nothing has changed for the better since his childhood!

Well, I have not been able to visit the Yala Swamp. Judging from the two arguments, I have a feeling that somebody, somewhere, is letting the Yala community down.

What is your comment when one looks at the bigger picture in respect of Yala? I believe each international project has unique features and alternative approaches.

It is a fact that Morgan Tsvangarai, former president of the Movement For Democratic Change (MDC), asked the west (Britain and the United States) to institute sanctions against Zimbabwe. This fact is not a propaganda initiative by the ZANU-PF. It is the truth - unadulterated fact. There are MDC elected officials in the Zimbabwean parliament. It is another fact that overwhelmingly, the people in Zimbabwe support ZANU-PF. The empirical evidence again says that democracy is a fact of life in Zimbabwe. Democracy is not a propaganda tool of ZANU-PF. The government of Zimbabwe was duly elected by the people of Zimbabwe even though Britain financed the MDC to try and taint the will of the people. People must learn to separate fact from fiction.

The article, ‘The Stigmatisation of Sex Workers’ () is a voice from a deep hole for the attention of all of us. When I was studying criminology in Law, I learnt that a society creates its own kind of criminals. Before we stigmatise, let us ask ourselves, what have I done for society to make it better for someone else to live in? Have we given sex workers proper teachings on family life? What other options do we offer as a society? I look forward to other good articles.

I have not had time to read the article, ‘The Stigmatisation of Sex Workers’ () in full. However consideration needs to be given to why, in a society, certain activities are stigmatised and some outlawed. We have lived among each other for thousands of years and some things eventually become clear from either a moral or social point of view. Sexual intercourse is too vital to be regarded as trivial as you appear to regard it.

Nigerians are waiting to know which political platform the country's Vice President, Atiku Abubakar will be contesting for the country's Presidential elections scheduled for 21 April 2007. Atiku has already revealed that he is set to announce his candidacy on Saturday (25 November 2006) but he is yet to disclose under which party's platform, as he was sacked from the ruling party last month.

Provisional results from historic legislative and municipal elections in Mauritania indicated on Thursday (23 November 2006) that opposition parties that had defied the country's previous military regime had made a strong showing. The Rally of Democratic Forces (RDF), which struggled against former military ruler Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya, won 12 of 43 National Assembly seats in the 19 November polls.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has pledged its support for President Joseph Kabila after his confirmation by the Supreme Court as winner of the recent elections aimed at consolidating the vast country’s democratic transition from years of civil war and factional fighting.

The loser in Congo's presidential election, Jean-Pierre Bemba, said on Tuesday (28 November 2006) that while he disagreed with the Supreme Court's endorsement of rival Joseph Kabila as winner, he would lead the opposition. "In the greater national interest and to preserve peace and to save the country from chaos and violence, today I, before God, the nation and history, in permanent communion with you all, vow to lead this fight for change within the framework of a strong opposition," he said on his radio and television stations.

The Executive Secretary of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas has disclosed that work on the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP), is at the completion point and would start discharging natural gas from Nigeria's Niger Delta as an alternative source of fuel to Togo, Benin and Ghana by the first quarter of 2007.

The reinforcement of South-South co-operation ties, based on their diversification is part of the Angolan Government's plans to be presented during the Africa-South America Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, from November 30 to December 01. This information was revealed this Wednesday (29 November 2006) to the press at Luanda's "4 de Fevereiro" International Airport by the Prime Minister's Assistant Minister, Aguinaldo Jaime, who will represent the Angolan Head of State, José Eduardo dos Santos, in this forum.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has advised African countries to diversify their exports in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "The ability of African countries to make significant progress towards achieving the MDGs, especially with regard to eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, largely depends on the extent to which African economies are able to diversify their exports and integrate into appropriate marketing and global production networks," said Stefano Bologna, Head of the UNIDO Southern African Regional Office.

With only three months before the Presidential and legislative elections in Senegal, 80-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade is implementing strategies geared towards re-election to power. One such move is to incorporate four opposition members into his cabinet line-up. President Wade, who had earlier reshuffled his cabinet after some ministers decided to declare their candidacy to run for President, named the new cabinet on Thursday (23 November 2006).